Big houses

The other day I was moved to wonder why someone with the money would buy a big house. What on earth would the someone want one for?

Let us suppose that the person concerned is in a long term relationship, has grown up children who have flown the nest, who don't need accommodating very often.

Let us neglect investment and tax considerations. So we don't, for example, go into the tax advantages of claiming half your fancy house as a home office.

So why would one buy such a place?

Item 1, most people of mature years do not actually make use of all that much space themselves. So for two, allow two or three rooms upstairs and two or three rooms downstairs. Probably plenty. Add in a decent broadband connection for luck. In sum, the same sort of thing as the suburban semis built in such huge numbers, both for private use and council occupation, in the second quarter of the last century. Or urban terraces before that. At least here in the UK.

Item 2, maybe they are lazy. Perhaps they want to be waited on hand and foot and to do next to nothing all day. So we need to add a few rooms for servants' accommodation. Assuming that there was not some shed out the back that said servants could be put up in.

Item 3, maybe they are keen on swimming. But is it really sensible to build a decent sized swimming pool in your garden, even supposing you have the space? Would it not make more sense to trot down to the local leisure centre, which probably has swimming pool enough, even if all the municipal lidos have been closed down. Have a bit of social life while you are at it. And if you were into swimming privacy, you could always rent the pool of an evening. With or without life guards.

Noting that the huge lido at Tooting Bec is still up and running, at least after a fashion. Much entertainment to be had there on summer Sunday afternoons - at least there used to be in my lido days. Smoke from more than one country and all. See references 4 and 5.

Item 4, maybe they are keen on tennis and tennis parties. I believe Past Master Blair is one such and his country house is well equipped in that department. So here, maybe, there might be a point.

Item 5, maybe they are keen on throwing parties, perhaps they fancy themselves as hosts of the sort of country house parties were are told went on between the wars, when people could still get the servants needed to run such things. Which all seems very wasteful: all those rich people running stonking great houses so that they can take turns at sleeping around. In effect running a slightly specialised boarding house, lodging house, rooming house or hostel. So why not become a proper hotel keeper? Or if its being at the party rather than running the party which you get a bang out of, why not can the great house and just rent a function suite in a hotel from time to time? That is to say, out-source the whole operation.

Item 6, ditto fancy gardens. Why not can the garden and just rough it with everyone else at the local NT stately home? Ditto helicopter pads. Why not just rough it with everyone else at the local flying club? Or maybe do a deal with some local farmer?

Item 7, then there are some people, according to 'Midsomer Murders' anyway, who like to play at Lord of the Manor and allow the WI (of reference 3) to use part of their garden for some worthy fund raising event from time to time. No fun in being rich if you can't lord it over the poor a bit.

Item 8, some people have other space eating hobbies, collections or pastimes. So some ladies collect shoes, for which a small spare room might be helpful. I collect books, which I manage to lose in book cases around the house. Some people might like to have a workroom, where they might produce more ornamental knick-knacks than one household can possibly consume. But no matter: for most people these needs can be contained within your average semi.

Item 9, size of house has an inverse relation to access to neighbours, shops and other facilities. The bigger your house, the further you are likely to have to walk or drive to get at these sorts of things. Unless, that is, you live in some huge apartment perched on top of some high rise complex, like the St. George Wharf complex in Vauxhall, snapped above, in which case you might well have facilities, if not neighbours in the ordinary sense of the word, down at street level. Provided there is no power cut and the lifts are still working. You also have the secret service right next door, should you need that sort of thing; the yellow building far left.

Item 10, then there are the maintenance costs. The maintenance of large houses, particularly large old houses out in the sticks, are apt to soak up lots of time and money. Not to mention all the trouble with the heritage people.

So despite all this thought and effort, for myself, I still don't see it. Other people might want big houses, but I don't.

Today, coming to write all this up, I needed to find a suitable picture of an unsuitable house, that is to say the one at the beginning of this post. Zoopla was not very good at high end houses at all, but Hamptons, once I had worked my way through all the filters was much better, coming up with a '10 bedroom detached house in Dunstable Road, Markyate, St. Albans for sale with a guide price of £7,500,000' - although I had to go to Rightmove to get a decent picture.

On the A5183, just north of Markyate Church. Top left in the bottom right hand quadrant. Handy both for the M1 and Whipsnade Zoo, a place I used to visit from time to time when I was small. Good line in wallabies and elephants at that time. A house seemingly once known as Markyate Cell and once the home to a lady robber who came to an early and unfortunate end. Sadly, this is probably fanciful, although the life of Katherine Ferrars was quite eventful in other ways.

Comes with quite a lot of land, so the buyer would probably be allowed to become a gentleman farmer or gentleman forester - but there are much cheaper ways of doing that.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Park.

Reference 2: https://www.hamptons.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://www.thewi.org.uk/. An organisation which was, I believe, started to help ordinary women, but which got taken over by their betters.

Reference 4: https://www.placesleisure.org/centres/tooting-bec-lido.

Reference 5: https://tootinglidohistory.org.uk/. Quite the local institution.

Reference 6: https://placesforpeople.co.uk/. Seemingly the operator of the lido. Which a quick look suggests is a property company which does good work, a company which is after a bit more than profit.